Found Art
by Illusive Woman
Summary: Cameron's taken to heart the determination to stand up for himself. But now that he's in college, will he learn to live? Cameron/OC.


Her hair was spun gold and red, glowing and changing as the light from the lecture-room windows poured over her head. Cameron slid into a seat two rows behind her and to the side. There was no _way_ he'd talk to her, but he could indulge in the view easily enough. He could just see her profile if he tried. She wasn't a delicate beauty, not like Sloane, not like any of the other girls Ferris had dated while he'd sat on the sidelines. Her face was strong, with high cheekbones and a straight nose. He couldn't see the color of her eyes from here, but something about the tilt of them made it seem as if she was laughing, even as she did nothing more extraordinary than pull a notebook out of her bag.

Details. His future - and, supposedly, the devil - were in the details.

With a small sigh, he pulled his own notebook out of his own backpack. The view was nice, but he was here to learn - not that he thought this class would teach him much. He grabbed a pencil and started preemptively doodling in the margins. Journalism classes were usually informative but a little boring - it was being out and about somewhere, taking notes, observing that was the interesting part. He'd never be a guy who _lived_ his life, not the way he saw others doing it with huge emotions, wild nights, frat parties, relationship drama. It just wasn't for him. He wasn't uptight - well, not as uptight as he'd been in high school - but he would never be Ferris. He would never make bold, beautiful plans out of thin air, never sing in a parade. And even if he did, no one would listen, let alone join him. College had actually made him feel better about that - so many thousands of people dropped onto a single campus, all of them as confused and hopelessly lost as him. All of them, like him, standing up and finding their own way.

_Call Ferris_, he jotted into his notebook. They'd compare notes about the first day of the spring semester. Maybe he'd even mention the girl with the laughing eyes. Hell, maybe he'd lie and tell Ferris he talked to her. It would alleviate some of the concern he knew Ferris felt for him. Ferris was convinced that Cameron was living a life of crushing loneliness and permanent virginity, two of the things he could never bear himself. Despite his semi-comatose state on their last day of freedom, he'd heard Ferris' true worries - _He'll marry the first girl he lays. And she'll treat him like shit._ Those words rang in his head for months, along with his own_. I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand._

Cameron believed that Ferris' first statement might be true, but not the second. Maybe he would marry the first girl he slept with; what was so wrong with that? But his own bold statement had been true as well - he'd never again allow himself to be bullied just to avoid confrontation or keep the peace. He lost his car, lost his allowance, lost many privileges that night. He'd let his father rant and rave and punish him. But when his father had screamed himself hoarse, Cameron, in calm and even tones, looking his father dead in the eye, finally told the man everything he had ever thought about him.

He may still be quiet, still be reserved, still prefer life on the sidelines, but from that day on, Cameron Fry looked people in the eyes and firmly spoke the truth.

The focus of the class was simple: good journalism required good photography. This purpose of this class, an experimental collaboration between two departments in the university, was to pair an aspiring journalist with an aspiring photographer and set them loose in the city. While the objective of the class was clear from Cameron's point of view - very few high-profile journalists went anywhere without a photographer these days - he wasn't sure what the art department got out of it. There were a million uses for a photography degree. He thought perhaps only certain photo students would take this class, but as he looked around he noticed a lot of unfamiliar faces. Although the school was large, he had gotten used to seeing the same faces in his journalism classes. The sheer number of strangers - a large portion of them pretty girls - indicated to him that this class might be required for them.

He still didn't understand the purpose. The journalist got the story; the photographer got the pictures to accompany the story. While he assumed they worked together in the sense that they were after the same story, he also assumed that their work was largely separate.

"Now," the professor said," you will be paired for the whole semester. I don't care about any personal problems or personality conflicts you may have - you will often be required to work with people you don't like in the field and work professionally with them no matter what. You will be given a subject to pursue for the semester; write and shoot as many stories as you can. No less than ten. It's all in the syllabus. Now! Pairs."

Professor Sabel began calling out names from the two attendance sheets in front of her. She seemed to be going down the lists alphabetically and for the first time Cameron felt a stab of unease about this arrangement. He was going to be spending an entire semester chasing stories with someone, spending long hours together and choosing moves together. He wasn't afraid of being disliked; he was worried about being ignored. Although he no longer let people run rough-shod over him, he still hadn't mastered asserting what he wanted on other people. And, as the writer, the final decisions of story choice and angles would come down to him. But in a disagreement, would he have the guts to not just tell the truth, but to insist upon his decisions? To tell someone else absolutely _No, we aren't doing things that way?_ And what if this _was_ a required class in the arts, and he got some photographer who was only concerned about the prettiness or edginess of her pictures? Photojournalism was supposed to be about raw reality, not portraits or pretty landscapes. Photojournalism was Margaret Burke-White and her images of beheadings, concentration camps and Ghandi, not Ansel Adams's trees, no matter how wonderful they were..

"Fry. Fry! Is there a Cameron Fry in this class?"

"Here!" he almost yelled, snapped out of his reverie. "Yes, Professor, I'm here. Sorry."

"Fry, you're paired with Robin Finnegan."

"Yes, ma'am." He jotted the name down in his notebook, knowing he had never met this person, not even knowing if "Robin" meant a boy's name or a girl's.

Professor Sabel paired off the rest of the class. It seemed as if great care had been taken to ensure an even amount of each. Perhaps this wouldn't be so bad.

Finally the students were told to go find their partners. Having no idea who Robin was, Cameron felt a bit at a loss. He began gathering his books but before he could do more than open his backpack, the chair in front of him flipped around and someone landed in it. He looked up and was struck dumb when he realized that the person in front of him was the girl he'd been eyeing.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was soft and mellow, with a touch of huskiness. "I'm Robin. But you can call me Bobbi. If you want."

He just stared at her for a minute, trying to force his brain to connect to his vocal chords. _Say something. Say something you idiot! Hi. My name's Cameron. Want to ditch this class and go see a movie? No, I can't say that! She'll think I'm a slacker. What do you think of this class? Way to be a brownnosing geek, Cam. Stop it! Stop and think. What would Ferris say?_

"Hello? You _are_ Cameron Fry, right?" her eyes clouded a moment and she glanced around the room, looking for someone else as confused as she was.

"Oh, um, yes. I'm Cameron. Sorry. Um. Sorry."

She smiled and those laughing eyes laughed louder. Not with mocking, but with a kind of natural amusement. Sitting across from her, he saw that her eyes were a light golden brown, the color of a perfect iced tea. She reached out her hand for his, "So it seems I'm going to be playing Albert Eisenstaedt to your Seymour Hersh."

Cameron's eyebrows shot up on his face. She knew her journalism. And by the look in her eyes, she knew she'd surprised him with her knowledge. A tiny smile lurked around her lips. "I was thinking Margaret Bourke-White myself," he managed to say.

"Even better. I'd rather shoot a war zone than Martha's Vineyard."

And now he knew that actually knew and understood journalism, at least from the picture perspective. She hadn't just memorized a few names to be taken seriously in this class. "Well, let's hope we don't get war as our topic."

"What would you rather get? Would garden parties be safe enough?" she laughed but, like her eyes, it wasn't at him. It was a sound that invited him to join in the joke - so he did.

"Or society weddings?"

"Too much drama and venom. Aquariums?"

"Shark attack. Salon openings?"

"Have you ever been burned by a curling iron? Hurts like a bitch. Department stores? No, wait, sale days can be tragic." She leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs out. Cameron hadn't seen her standing up, but judging by those legs she was tall. "We'd better stick to furniture upholsterer's."

"Or long country roads with fields full of cows."

She was still laughing when Professor Sabel stopped by them with a small box filled with slips of paper. "Your topics," she said crisply.

Robin and Cameron shared a single look of perfect communication: _Who chooses?_ Cameron inclined his head a little and she took the hint, sticking her hand in the box and grabbing one of the slips.

They waited until the professor had moved on before opening the slip.

"Art?" Cameron said disbelievingly. As much as he'd joked about wanting a safe assignment, this seemed absurd. "Shit, I know they can't send us to crime scenes, but what about politics? Or courtroom reporting? Something interesting."

She was eyeing him carefully, suddenly pulling back. "You don't have to find art interesting, but don't you think culture is worthy of being reported?"

_Shit._ He'd forgotten he was speaking to a member of the art department. But he wasn't going to backpeddle or placate. He still stuck by that rule. And he wouldn't let Robin and her beautiful hair change that. "Of course it is," he said impatiently. "But art is usually written about by art critics, who are art majors."

"By that logic, political articles should be written by politicians. And articles on murder written by cops. And courtroom reporting should be done by lawyers. And -"

"Fine!" he snapped, and then softened it with a small smile. "You win. I've just never been an art person, really. I guess we'll have to hit a museum," he added. For a split second the Impressionist painting, the Seurat one, flashed in his mind and he closed his eyes.

"There's a concert in the park tomorrow night. Why don't we go?"

Cameron's eyes snapped open and the words fell out of his mouth without consulting his brain. "Are you asking me out?"

The laughing eyes lit up and her face brightened into a grin. "Um, no? Look, the paper just said Art. It didn't specifically say _visual_ art. Isn't music an art form?" Her voice warmed and her words began to tumble out as she got more into her idea. "Hell, why don't we do this whole thing without a single piece on traditional visual art? Music, performance pieces in the street, architecture, hell, we could watch movies and call it art! The film department would agree."

"Well . . . okay." After a moment he smiled and, as usual, it changed his whole face. "Let's do this thing."


End file.
